On to November after no-surprise primary season (commentary)

Primary season is over and brought nothing in the way of surprises in the races for mayor and City Council.

Now it's on to November, where it's getting increasingly hard to see voters not giving Mayor Bill de Blasio a second term in office.

De Blasio crushed his nearest competition, former Brooklyn Councilman Sal Albanese, 75 percent to 15 percent. Albanese, a Staten Islander these days, worked hard to dent de Blasio, but could have spent the summer in the Adirondacks and hardly have done worse.

Not to say that there's a lot of enthusiasm out there for Hizzoner. Just over 11 percent of eligible voters turned out for the Democratic primary. Maybe it was just the fact that de Blasio is seen as an overwhelming favorite to be re-elected. Kind of dampens the urgency.

Any anti-de Blasio effort for November has to begin on Staten Island, the only borough that the mayor lost in the 2013 election, and a place where he remains widely unpopular. And Albanese was at least able to make a game of it here, but still came home with around 36 percent of the vote to de Blasio's roughly 56 percent.

The Democratic results hold lessons for Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn), the mayor's GOP challenger for November. Is there enough Democratic dissatisfaction or ennui among Democrats out there to give a Republican alternative a toehold? While the raw citywide vote totals are low, de Blasio's margin of victory was still titanic. Democrats seem more than fine with giving him another four years in office (even if BDB, being limited to just two terms, will be a lame duck in two years).

In other words, don't count on a lot of Democrats defections even if a lot of Democrats stay home.

More importantly, in order for her to even be in the game, Malliotakis has to get a huge vote on Staten Island, something approaching the 70-plus percent that Republicans Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg got here.

So, 36 percent of Island Democrats voted for Albanese. A handful of Dem votes went to other candidates as well. Is that a beachhead for Malliotakis, something she can build on? Can some of those voters be enticed over the line in a borough where Dems often vote on the GOP line? That will be Malliotakis' mission.

The other closely watched race on the Island was the North Shore Democratic primary battle pitting Councilwoman Debi Rose against community activist Kamillah Hanks.

It was a vitriolic campaign, with charges flying back and forth. But as with most local primaries, the whole thing came down to turnout, and Rose showed a strong upper hand. Again, not a surprise: She's the one with a track record of turning out the vote in that district, going all the way back to 2001, when she came close to winning a three-way Democratic primary. She won the seat outright eight years later, after triumphing in a party primary.

Hanks, meanwhile, touted the fact that she'd knocked on thousands of doors over the course of the 2017 campaign. But she wasn't able to turn those contacts into votes, and Rose swamped her, 69 percent to 30 percent. The victory all but guarantees Rose's re-election to the Council in the heavily Democratic district, even though Hanks remains on the Reform Party line and Michael Penrose is running on the Republican and Conservative lines.

So, the next stop is Election Day. The mayoral race between de Blasio and Malliotakis will crank up in earnest. There's already no love lost between the two ideological opposites, so expect there to be fireworks. Have you seen Malliotakis' boxing-themed campaign ad?

It will all be something to look forward to in a year that's so far run to form.